


Salt and Sherlock

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Carol - Freeform, F/F, Femlock, and some scenes are missed out, and the writing is different - it's mine, because I thought copying out Carol with name-changes would be horrifically boring, carol au, everyone is in it somewhere pretty much, it's pretty in tune with the book but some things are changed, plus i want to keep the characters of everyone, so :) you have to put up with my writing, soft, to write as much as to read
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:11:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7150688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a femlock Carol AU basically. Sherlock, an aspiring writer of detective fiction working in a department store over Christmas, meets John Watson, a suburban housewife going through a messy divorce and custody battle for her son Hamish, and they have a decision to make: at what price can a person pursue love?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One: the store

**Author's Note:**

> SO here's the deal, it's a reworking of Carol with femlock :)  
> Sherlock is Therese, but writes detective novels instead of designing plays  
> John (short for Johanna but that's a mouthful), is Carol  
> Janine is Jamie, who plays the part of Richard  
> Anderson is Phil but is still called Phil bc Anderson's name is Philip lmao  
> Mrs Hudson is Mrs Robichek  
> Mary is Mark, who plays the role of Harge  
> Rindy is replaced with a son by the name of Hamish  
> Sally Donovan is Saul who plays the part of Danny  
> and that is all  
> any questions, do ask <3  
> Major Sholto is Jamesina (James for short- his actual name really is James) and plays the role of Abby

The lunch-hour in the employees’ cafeteria at Fortnum and Mason’s had reached its peak. The long tables were already crowded and full, and those still queuing up politely for their food were left wandering aimlessly with loaded trays, forced to squeeze in awkwardly amongst their fellows and make small-talk about the weather. The gentile (and less so) chit-chat of the workers, the clatter of trays and cutlery and the chiming crash of cash-registers collided together into one great machine of noise, a complex thing where everything came together into a loveless din.

Sherlock sat nervously, carefully forking peas and mashed potato into her mouth and trying to pretend they didn’t taste awful. She had a detective novel propped up against her plate. Up until today she had read and reread the handbook she had been given on her first day, having neglected to bring anything else. She had it memorised, every last slightly condescending word of it by heart. It was, she had thought miserably every time she read it, the most boring piece of reading material she had ever come across. She was more cheerful now, way away in a world of murder and intrepid crime-fighting. She dreamed of a world like that. To run away and never return, never have to come back to this drab, dull city with its rain and its pigeons and its smog.

And if that couldn’t happen, she thought she might at least get away from this. Jamie’s friend Richard had brought up the prospect of a job away from this hideous department store after Christmas. A slim possibility that she could help out in a publishing place. She wondered why she wasn’t thrilled about it. Surely she ought to be - it was her dream, after all, wasn’t it? To write…yes, she wanted to write fiction, but surely reading it, editing it, that was so many steps closer than she was currently. She realised slowly that the reason she felt so uninterested was that she had no real belief in Richard’s ability to score her any kind of job. And this place, it was so like a prison. A pretty, pastel, porticoed prison full of tourists and peers and hushed tailor’s girls in the dressing-rooms. She felt as if she never saw a window, only the harsh too-bright electric lights. The doors and walls, blank, cold, emotionless, seemed to close in on her, to suck the life, the vitality from her, the emotion and kindness from the world. Everything became pointless in the endless rounds of menial services done for upper-class women who looked down their noses at her with bored hauteur, who barely seemed to notice she existed. It made her feel less and less alive.

She was pulled from her reverie - a woman had sat down beside her. ‘Is anyone sitting here?’ she asked. Sherlock looked up. The woman had thick owl-like glasses and bushy brown hair. She was dressed in a cardigan of overly bright purple over shapeless beige clothes. Sherlock was momentarily horrified. The woman looked as she felt she might become - unreal, broken, dull. It wasn’t real, though, she discovered, blinking and looking again. There was perhaps some beauty in this woman, some beauty in the wrinkles that adorned her skin, in her greying hair. Sherlock shook her head. The woman smiled and sat down beside her, chattering as she shoveled forkfuls of peas and potato and slices of some grey meat whose name Sherlock could not remember.

The book fell onto its face, and the woman clucked. “My now, whatever are you reading?” she asked, as Sherlock flushed, picked it up, marked the page, shut it and shoved it into her pocket.

“Just a novel.” she said.

“It looked like whatshisname - Wimsey - to me. I do love detective novels. So exciting. And in those ones - Harriet, the lady writer. So glamorous!” Harriet Vane, ever Sherlock’s inspiration, the lady who wrote detective novels and said no categorically to men. If only Sherlock could learn to say no properly. Not that she wanted to say no… It was just difficult, with Jamie, as it had been with every man before. He was very kind to her, considering she would not say she loved him. She knew that. He could have been modelling himself on Dorothy Sayers’ gentleman-detective. She ought to be more grateful, she supposed, and she did feel affection for him, but she could not quite believe that this lukewarm fondness was what love was. None of the poems made it seem like this was love. It was supposed to be some burning, wonderful thing. And yet, it wasn’t. She looked up. The woman - her co-worker, she supposed - was still speaking, waxing lyrical about novels, but now she had moved onto her life, to her dead husband, to her son, to her neighbours. She never stopped talking. “I’m Mrs Hudson by the way,” she added. “Mrs Martha Hudson. I’ve seen you around - in the toy department, yes?” Sherlock nodded absently. “I’m downstairs, in the shoes. What’s your name, dear?”

“Sherlock.”

“How fancy! You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you getting along all right?” The woman’s red-painted lips held affection, tendresse. Her eyes seemed alive behind the smudge glass of her spectacles. Sherlock realised that she didn’t look half-dead, and in realising this that most of the people in the shop did. They moved like zombies, unthinking, unseeing, corpses kept alive by fatigue, by the unceasing need to work, work, work. How cruel this all was, she thought, how unfair. How horrible that she was a part of it. Mrs Hudson was repeating herself. “Are you getting along all right?”

“Yes, just fine, thank you.” Or she would be, so long as she didn’t succumb and end up trapped here. ‘It’ll be all right,’ Jamie said. ‘Because you aren’t like the rest. You’re different. You have this absolute certainty that it’s temporary, that you’ll escape.’ She hoped he was right. But she didn’t want to think about Jamie. She almost never wanted to think about Jamie…and yet there he was, a huge ink-blot on the clean jotter of her life, begging to be considered. The trouble was that he didn’t understand how she felt, that he couldn’t understand. These things, the feeling of imprisonment, of colours fading to a uniform emotionless grey, this was something she could never tell Jamie. This was something to which he would say, ‘you’re too poetic, Sherlock, it’s silly.’ And she would say, ‘you’re an artist, you’re supposed to understand poeticism.’ And he would say, ‘yes, but not in the abstract, not in your abstract. You take things too far. You always take things too far.’

“Do you like it here?” Mrs Hudson asked.

Sherlock nodded. She couldn’t very well say, no, I hate it, the walls are closing in. That simply wasn’t the sort of thing one said. A young man came and took their trays away, wordlessly. The older woman pulled a bowl of tinned peaches towards her. They slithered from the spoon like fish as she deftly scooped them up in her spoon. Goldfish swimming slowly in a pool of sunlight-coloured juice. She ate them so slowly. Sherlock stared at the table, and then looked up, fascinated, unable not to watch.

“I’m on the third floor.” Said Mrs Hudson. “In the shoe department, like I said. Just…if you ever need to ask me anything, do pay me a visit. I’d be very…pleased to see you.” Her voice was stilted suddenly, like she couldn’t get the words to fit the beat, as if she were delivering a message the detail of which she could not quite recall.

“Thanks.” Sherlock said. She never visited Mrs Hudson, but she saw her one morning, hobbling up the grand staircase. Why didn’t she just take the lift, Sherlock wondered. The elevator was there for a reason. She looked pained, and a little like a gnome. Ah well. Sherlock walked on, took the lift upstairs with several other women. No-one spoke, and eyes were turned aside. This was all part of the store. You were imprisoned with other people, but you never spoke to them. Never, never, never. Mrs Hudson had broken this unwritten rule. Strange. Stranger and stranger.

Outside the lift, she stood for a moment at the entrance to the toy department, watching the trains run. The circular track hung suspended from the ceiling, and two smart electric trains ran, one red, one blue, chased each other round it, doomed to never catch up. They were new, modern, and their paint shone as the chugged smoothly along, ferrying their cargo. Behind them they dragged little brown-lacquered carriages with tiny people leaning from the windows, and freight trailers after that, laden with plastic coal and real miniature lumber. They were quite realistic, and seemed intent, but they were purposeless, she thought. They just went round and round, never catching their fellows, pointlessly racing round their track, over and over and over. It was just like the store, people doing the same stupid menial tasks over and over and for what purpose? None. As with the trains, so with the store. A gradual loss of meaning, and yet they never stopped, just kept going and going with no destination in sight. And there was no escape, not for the trains, not for the people working at Fortnum and Mason’s. She felt so trapped and imprisoned she felt she could almost scream. And yet that was no option. She just had to keep on going and going.

She shook her head, carried on. She always thought about things too much, and she wondered, did other people do that? Did other people think this much. She felt sure they could not. Her mind must work differently from theirs. It was the only explanation. It was so much. Sometimes she felt overwhelmed, as if she were drowning in poetry and ideas and concepts that she could never fully understand. She had tried to explain it to Jamie once, but he had been confused, and had tried to kiss her. It had not been a pleasant experience.

Everything was beginning. The toy department had a quiet sense of anticipation. There were no customers yet, just staff, pulling dolls out onto the counter and straightening their legs, or opening packets of modelling clay at the craft table, or counting money, so concentrated that they could not even raise their heads when Sherlock dutifully bade them good morning. The little carousel had started up behind her. The horses were prancing and the chiming, mechanical music had started up in time to the grinding sound as the horses slid up and down and the elephant jerked forward. The elephant on the merry-go-round was a great source of discord in the toy department. Practically every day it sparked arguments between children, tantrums, the embarrassed parents who had to drag their child out screaming, and the pushy righteous ones who were convinced that their child and only theirs had the right to ride the elephant.

She slid into place behind the counter in the doll department just as the first customers tottered from the lifts, wandering about, disorientated but purposeful. It seemed to happen in a moment, that everything got busy. It was as if she had blinked and suddenly a wave of people had swept up to cover her. “Do you have any of the dolls that say ‘mama’?” asked a woman in front of her.

“Can you do this doll but with a green dress instead of this blue one?”

“Do you have any of the dolls that wet?”

“They need to say it when you turn them upside down – I’ve seen them advertised.”

“No, no, not that size – smaller!”

“Are you listening to me?”

She wanted to yell at all of them and run out into the cold grey rain-drenched streets, away from the stifling unnatural heat of this third floor jail-cell. But this was everyday business in the department store. Many, many people came, and they blurred into types that she did not care to name or to think about.

One evening, as Sherlock was walking home, she saw Mrs Hudson alone in a dingy tea-rooms, lit up in the window by the street-lights. She was drinking a solitary cup of tea. She looked lonely. Feeling suddenly guilty for ignoring her, Sherlock went inside. It was on a whim, really. A bell rung as she pushed open the green-painted door, and she ordered a cup of tea from a sleepy-looking waitress, and perched herself on a chair opposite Mrs Hudson. “H-hello.” She said, and the words left her mouth more gently than she had been expecting, so her voice came out as a whisper.

“Hello!” the older woman’s face broke into a sunny smile. “How are you?”

“Just fine, thank you – and you?”

“Peachy. My hip’s been acting up but well, you can’t complain, can you?”

You could, Sherlock thought. I would. But Mrs Hudson didn’t seem the complaining type. She just smiled acquiescingly. They talked of this and that for a while, and drunk their tea, and then got up to leave. Walking down the street outside, Mrs Hudson asked suddenly, “Have you got food at home?”

Sherlock was surprised. “Well, no.” she said. “I was going to buy something later.”

“Why don’t you come home with me?” Mrs Hudson asked, eyes bright, expression eager. “I’m all on my own, and it isn’t often I get company.”

Sherlock wasn’t sure. She suffered, for a moment, the agonies of indecision. The sensible thing to do would be to protest politely, and make her way home to eat alone. But the kind thing would be to go with Mrs Hudson, who would clearly be sad if she did not. “All right.” She said.

“Good. I have to stop in at the delicatessen to buy some bits and pieces – do you mind that?”

“No.” At the delicatessen, Sherlock saw a fruit-cake like a slab of stone, or a big heavy brick, brown and speckled with nuts and currants, with the bright spots of red glacé cherries running through it like rubies. She bought it, wrapped up in paper and put into a brown bag, to give to Mrs Hudson to say thank-you.

Mrs Hudson’s house was much like her. It was small and cramped, granted, and not the lightest of places, but everything was covered in a mish-mash of floral prints and patterned cushions. It seemed to embody her. Sherlock did not remember much of the evening, but she remembered Mrs Hudson opening a chest in her bedroom and throwing sequined, dazzling clothing onto the bed – bejewelled dresses, little pieces like carnival outfits all covered in glitter and glass gems. “I used to be a dancer back in my day,” Mrs Hudson said wistfully. “Before I got married and condemned myself. I was proper. Exotic. I danced in America and all, on stages. And the after-parties…all those girls and all that drink, and the little cocktails with the cherries – or olives, I never remember – on sticks and little tiny umbrellas.” She laughed bitterly, hysterically. “I loved it. And I looked so good – look, that’s me.”

She flashed Sherlock a photograph of a young woman dressed in what she could only describe as sparkling lingerie, two other girls dressed the same hanging onto her arms. All three were smiling. Mrs Hudson pointed with her finger to the girl in the middle, her nail with the chipped red nail-polish on it obscuring her face. “That was me. God, we had good fun! I haven’t had proper fun like that in years. Not since I was married. Try one of the costumes on! Oh, you must!” She pressed a golden sequin-covered dress into Sherlock’s helpless hands. “Here! Here!” Somehow before she knew it, Sherlock was wearing the dress. She did not look like herself. Her reflection frightened her. She looked bold and daring, and she knew that that was something she was not, something she could never be. She wanted to take it off, wanted to grab her bag and run and never look back. The heat of the little room was oppressive, the radiator cranked up to full. She ended up in the chair, and felt waves of unanticipated tiredness overcome her. Sometime, she succumbed to sleep, and woke in the dull hours to the sounds of drunken louts outside, and Mrs Hudson’s snuffling snores. She stood, and put on her clothes silently in the darkness, and escaped. It was easy, and it was easy because it was not really escaping at all. Mrs Hudson had not been keeping her prisoner, and the same logic, she realised in the cool night air, shivering under her jacket, could be applied to the store.


	2. Two: the woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is offered a job, and meets John.

“Sherry, do you remember that fellow I told you about? Phil Anderson?”

“Vaguely.” Sherlock shifted her feet, watching the blurred shapes of people walk past through the smudgy glass panes in the door.

“Well, he says he’s maybe got an opening. I mean, they could squeeze you a job.”

“What? A proper job?”

“Yes. Down in Bloomsbury – they’ve got some detective novels that need editing, and the man won’t work with their current editor, says he keeps adding superfluous bits or something. I don’t know. Sounded confusing. But anyway, you have a job, if you want it.”

“Are you kidding? Of course I want it!” It was like magic.

“Phil wants to see us tonight… I’ll tell you more about it when I see you – I’m just leaving school now. I’ll see you in half an hour – I have some errands to run.”

“See you then.”

“Yes. I love you, Sherry.”

“Bye.” She couldn’t return the words, and he knew it. She put the phone down, her excitement a little dulled by Jamie’s reminding her of his love, which she could not repay just now, and perhaps could never repay. Still, she thought, as she went upstairs and changed into a dress, she shouldn’t care. She ought to be happy. A job! A job! It was the magic word. She repeated to herself as she applied lipstick in front of the bathroom mirror. A job! A job! The single syllable sent a thrill to her soul like a chill wind in high summer.

She walked down to the corner shop and bought a bottle of gin, trying to remember if she had tonic water in the cupboard. She decided she had seen a bottle, and left without it, then halfway down the road she changed her mind and rushed back to buy some, along with some Swedish biscuits that looked interesting. Then she sat at the coffee table and the yellow notebooks spread out across it, and got on with indexing them. She took the lid of a marker and wrote in capital letters ‘THE BLIND BANKER’ on a pile of three, and then on a pile of six, ‘A STUDY IN PINK’.

“What’re you doing?” Jamie asked, coming in and throwing his coat over the back of a chair.

“Indexing.” Sherlock said, concentrating.

“Indexing what?”

“Notes for my novels.”

“Not the manuscripts?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t written them yet. I’m waiting for inspiration. I want to find my muse.”

“I’ve found mine.” Jamie said, tossing his satchelful of art supplies onto the floor and sitting down. “When will you let me draw you, Sherry?” He was suddenly serious. Sherlock blinked, squeezing her eyes up and wishing she could dream all of this away.

“I don’t know, Jamie. I’m busy. I’ve got the store.”

“But that’s only till Christmas!” He grasped her arm. “Please, Sherry. You’re my everything.”

“You’re not mine, though.” Sherlock said, shaking him off. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I’ll try and find time.”

“You still want to come to Europe with me though, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Good, then. Are you free this weekend?”

“I have to work Saturday, but Sunday I’m free.”

“Well, why don’t we go to the park or something? Go adventuring round Covent Garden maybe?”

Sherlock smiled. “All right.” It was a good idea. She liked it. She did like being with Jamie, as long as he refrained from talking about love.

Phil came later, a slightly equine looking man with neatly pointed hair and a permanently pessimistic expression. He brought with him a young black man with dark twisting hair who he introduced as Saul. Phil and Jamie talked of art, poetry and cars. They did not come round to the topic of the job. Nervously, Sherlock interjected. “I heard,” she said. “That you had a job for me.”

“Oh, yes, you’re a shoe-in.” Phil said, smiling blankly. “I’ll give you the number.” He wrote it down on the back of an envelope and handed it to her. “Here. Just ring them and tell them Phil Anderson recommended you. I’m sure they’ll take you on.” Sherlock did not quite dare believe it. Her natural pessimism crept in. That was all that was said about the job. Phil got restless soon after, and they went wandering through the streets in search of somewhere to eat. The Swedish biscuits were left untouched in their packet on the coffee table in Sherlock’s flat, next to the unopened bottle of gin. She came back to them that evening. They looked forlorn, and for some strange and unknown reason she found that she wanted to cry.

It was a few days after this that everything changed.

Sherlock remembered that in the morning Abigail Hibbert, the floor manager came and slapped a faux-crocodile-skin cardboard valise onto the countertop. “We need to get this sold today.” She said, in her firm, efficient voice. “If we don’t, it’ll be marked down and that, Miss Holmes, will mean a loss for the store. So sell it, please.” Sherlock nodded.

She was on the afternoon shift. As she came over, the men whistled and called. She ignored them resolutely. It was half-validating and half-demeaning, and she never felt attracted to them, but it nudged her vanity, which was nice. She was back on shift, just wrapping up a stiff-legged doll and putting it in the post pile, when the woman came in. Sherlock’s eye was caught instantly. She didn’t know why.

The woman had blondish hair, greying a little, cut short into a bob, fronds lapping at her neck. She was very beautiful, quite short, dressed in loose, expensive-looking blue silk trousers and an exquisite cream-coloured sweater that clearly cost more money than Sherlock had ever had the fortune to come by. She caught Sherlock’s eye, and smiled, and Sherlock felt strangely dizzy, her vision blurring a little. The woman came up to the counter and addressed her. “I’m looking to buy a doll.” She said, in a voice low and grave but which promised amusement and secretive smiles. Sherlock’s heart seemed to be misbehaving, her pulse rushing.

“O-of course.” Sherlock said. “What kind?”

“Maybe one of those?” the woman said, pointing to a gorgeous porcelain doll on the second shelf of the glass display case.

“Are you sure? I don’t think we have them in stock.”

“I rather think I am.”

“Of course, then.” For anyone else she would have hesitated, but not for this woman. For this woman, she would never hesitate. She took the key from the drawer under the counter. “I’m opening the case.” She said forthrightly to Mildred, another girl on shift.

Mildred looked horrified. “Are you sure? Abigail will kill you. She says all the dolls are in stock.”

Sherlock shook her head decidedly. “This one isn’t. I’m certain.” And even if she wasn’t sure, she felt that for this woman she would do it anyway. Somehow she had to be certain now, had to be confident. It was uncharacteristic, but she felt emboldened as she unlocked the case and took out the doll.

“This one?” she said, holding it out to the woman.

The woman smiled, and Sherlock grasped the counter to steady herself, because suddenly her legs were not as stable as she had been and she was half-sure that she would fall at any moment. Distracted, she heard herself saying, “I’ll wrap it for you. Do you want it now, or would you like us to post it?”

“What time will it arrive if you post it?”

“As long as it’s within Britain, it’ll be there by Christmas eve.”

“Oh, good. You can post it, then.”

“All right – I just need to fill in the postal slip, then. Name?”

“Mrs Johanna H. Watson.” Johanna. A pretty name. Long, but beautiful. And it was her name, the name of the beautiful woman and that made it beautiful in and of itself. Johanna. Johanna. Johanna. She repeated it in her head, savouring the sound of the woman saying it. She wrote it down, too, on the slip.

“Address?” The woman gave an address in Surrey, and Sherlock wrote it down, memorising it along with the name. She looked up. “There, then. That’s done. Have a nice day.” She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

The woman returned the smile, dazzlingly. “Thank you. And I will.” Sherlock watched her leave. Her head swum, and she wondered if she was coming down with something. She felt faint. Dazed, she only heard what Mildred was saying when she was shaken by the shoulder.

“You idiot, Sherlock – you have to give her the slip! How is she supposed to collect the purchase if you don’t give her the slip!”

Sherlock looked down. The green piece of paper was still in her hand, gripped tight, the woman’s name and address written down, engraved on the paper as on her heart. She stumbled forward and ran towards the woman, who turned, a confused, amused look on her face, the corners of her peach-tinted lips turned up into a half-smile. “You need to take the slip.” Sherlock said. “So you can collect the doll.” She sounded stupid. She was sure.

“Oh, of course. Silly of me. I was distracted.” The woman took the slip from Sherlock’s hand with fingertips painted scarlet, and smiled again, dumbfounding Sherlock once more. Sherlock stood, star-struck, and when she came to the woman had gone. All she had left was a name, and an address, graven on her memory.

The incident preyed on her mind, stuck there, lodged and unmoveable. Later that afternoon she took one of the Fortnum And Mason gift-cards from the stack under the counter, and sat on the radiator in her break to write it. ‘Dear Mrs Watson,’ she wrote. ‘Thank you for your custom, and happy Christmas.’ It was bleak, but she could write nothing more. In place of a signature, she wrote her phone number, and, after a second’s hesitation, sent it out in the last post.

That evening, Mrs Gruber from downstairs knocked on Sherlock’s door. “The phone’s ringing for you.” She said.

Sherlock thanked Mrs Gruber and gave her a Swedish biscuit. They were a little strange. Downstairs, she picked up the phone, and a thrill went through her as she heard Mrs Watson’s well-remembered voice a second time. “I wanted to thank you for the card.” Mrs Watson said.

“I-I…you’re very welcome.”

“You’re the girl from the doll-counter, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you sent that card?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, it was a very nice gesture. Listen, in the spirit of Christmas goodwill, why don’t we meet for drinks or lunch or something? Are you free at lunchtime tomorrow?”

“I have an hour off from one till two.”

“And do you have any plans?”

Sherlock shook her head, then remembered she was on the phone and felt incredibly foolish. “No, no. I don’t have any plans.”

“Fantastic. Then I’ll meet you at the front entrance, if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course it is.”

“Good.” Sherlock felt like she could hear Mrs Watson smiling at the other end of the phone.

“Thank you, Mrs Watson.” Sherlock added. “It’s terribly kind of you.”

“Not at all. It isn’t any trouble, and you were terribly kind to me. Besides, call me John. Johanna is a mouthful and I’d rather like to forget I’m Mrs Watson. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She put the phone down. Sherlock listened to static for a moment, then clicked the phone into its holder and went back upstairs feeling exhilarated.

The next day she left the store and stood outside in the cold, her coat-collar turned up against the wind, hands in pockets, waiting for John. She did not come. Sherlock knew she should give up, should go back inside. She knew it was futile and that she was wasting time. But she could not give up. She felt something, some strange unchangeable pull towards John that meant that she would wait, she realised, forever, if it meant that she could see her face again. Like a princess in a fairytale, she would wait a hundred years for John. The implications of this analogy bubbled up beneath the surface. Did that mean, then, that John was her true love, coming to save her and awaken her with a kiss? Was that what she felt John was to her? How could she be? She was a suburban housewife, not a handsome prince. It was ridiculous, impossible….and yet, it was.

Then she heard the clatter of sensible shoes on the pavement. They stood out from the rest of the pattering crowds because they sounded determined, as if they had a fixed aim in mind, and they were coming towards her. She looked up, and could not stop herself from smiling as she met John’s eyes. John, who was wearing a navy blue velvet-collared coat and was approaching her. “I’m sorry I’m late.” John said, and she did sound apologetic. “I got caught up at my lawyer’s office. Do you still have time for lunch?”

Sherlock looked at her watch. She did not have time. “Yes.” She said. “Yes of course I have time.”

John smiled, relieved. “Oh, good. Come on then. I thought we’d go to Angelo’s.” They set off down the street.

The restaurant was dimly lit, and touched John’s features with a softening rose-coloured light. She looked even more beautiful like that. John told Sherlock about her husband, Mark, and how he couldn’t understand her, and about the custody battle with him for her son Hamish. Sherlock listened, and in turn found herself explaining about Jamie and Phil and the job.

“Do you often send cards to people you meet in the store?” John asked.

“No.”

“How many times have you done it before?”

“Just once.”

“Why did you do it.”

“On an impulse.” Sherlock paused, gathered her resolve, and looked John in the eye. The wine helped. “I think you’re marvellous.” She said.

“You are strange.” John said, smiling, with her laughing, dancing eyes fixed on Sherlock’s.

“What do you mean?”

“Flung out of space.”


End file.
